Guys – this video has been one of the most requested on our channel (DHRME) – and for good reason! The triple driver setup is… mwah
Before we talk about the audio, let’s get superficial and talk about the design and build quality.
Design
We’re not going to lie. Ever since the first version of these buds came out, there was only one thing we could think about. Ring doorbells. Apart from the fact they look like that the buds were bigger than we thought. The buds are big and stick quite a bit out of your ear like door handles. But that handle allows you to easily adjust them in your ear when you need to, so it has its upsides. The Status Between 3ANC comes in two colors. Bone and Onyx which is the one we have here. The case feels light, looks sleek and is very portable. No issues there. What we especially liked was how you put the buds in and take them out of the case. It feels very intuitive and oddly satisfying to put into the case. There’s just something about rectangles and rectangular slots…. What was more satisfying is when we put them in our earholes. The voice guidance is very.. umm.. sensual. We think that the CEO himself recorded it. Our status? Turned on.
Status has done well in the controls department. If you don’t like being put into boxes and having to choose between touch gestures or physical buttons, then the Between 3ANC might tick your box. It does both. You get a button on top of each earbud as well as that flat surface, the top half of which is touchable. The button, despite it being on the smaller side, works well and is easy to click. The touch surface hasn’t been as reliable. You need to touch it in the right place and for the right amount of time. The same applies to the Between 3ANC. It does take some getting used to but it gives you all the controls you could almost ask for. We’ll talk about which control is missing in the calls section. But if you’re a regular on this channel, you’ll already know what that is. If you don’t – maybe consider subscribing?
What isn’t missing is a proper battery and charging setup. You get your standard Type C but also support for wireless charging. There’s also a colorblind friendly way of telling how much juice is left in the box. 3 LEDs – simple, nice! The battery life itself is advertised to be 8 hours with ANC on and 12 without. In our DHRME battery test we got just under 6 hours with ANC on. Less than advertised, but still very much above average.
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🎧 Buy the Status Between 3ANC
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Build & Comfort
The materials on the buds and case are hard plastic but well built and do not feel cheap. The hinge on the case is sturdy with no creak. The buds have plastic on the top half and some sort of metal on the bottom. Solid feeling. The buds come with 3 sizes of silicone tips as well as wingtips for better fit. And they surely fit well! The silicone is very grippy and the combination with a wing tip really helps keep them in place. We even dared working out with them in because they are IPX5 rated, and yes, they stayed place! We wouldn’t have said that looking at the size of the buds and how far they protrude out of your ears.
But were the Between 3ANC comfortable? Yes, yes they were. We thought we would really notice the weight – but you know what – it’s not how heavy it is, but how you distribute it. We’ve used them for several hours and we barely had any issues with them.
Extra features
The Between 3 ANC app has a very low rating on the Play store. And we think we know why that might be. It worked fine when we connected to the first device, but the moment we connected to two phones, both the apps just had these greyed out menus and we couldn’t interact with it anymore. Overall, it seems a little unreliable in our short time with it. Of course, you CAN get it to work if you forget the pairing and start from scratch.
And when the app actually does work, it’s pretty basic. You get an ANC / transparency toggle, some EQ presets and a custom 8 band, non-parametric EQ. You can also update your firmware.
The Status Between 3 ANC features multipoint and when using it with Android phones, it worked fairly well. You could just press play on the second without having to pause audio on the first. This also works with a Mac and a phone, but if you’re in a browser – say using YouTube on the Mac, the audio switched over to the phone, but the YouTube video on the Mac sometimes paused and sometimes it just kept playing without audio – so less than ideal. There were also times when switching didn’t work at all. My Android phone refused to play audio even though nothing was playing on the Mac. But hey – we’ve come a long way from the days where multipoint used to be a ‘special feature’, so let’s count our blessings, shall we? If you use two devices on the regular, you should be fine. But if you have 5 phones and multiple other devices like us – well – you’ve got a problem. With these buds, but also in general.
And since this is a premium set of earbuds, it’s good to mention that it does NOT have an in-ear sensor to play or pause your music. If you’re into that kind of thing.
Audio
In terms of audio – guys if you thought codecs were important – well Status has just slapped you in the face. Yes – you! With its triple driver setup. The thing is – we’ve said over and over – a LOT of things in the signal chain matter more than codecs. And the Status Between 3 ANC is the clearest example of this we’ve ever seen. There are no fancy codecs – just good ol’ SBC and AAC supported with a triple driver setup on each earbud. The result? S Tier sound for wireless earbuds!
We like the fact that these come with three EQ presets – all of which are VERY good. We’d argue that the default ‘Status Signature’ is probably the worst. A bit bass focused and more ‘mainstream’, but we understand why Status would do that when they’re going up against the Airpods of this world. And you know, while we don’t personally identify as ‘audiophiles’, the Status Audiophile preset was our favourite, because it really shows what these earbuds can do.
These sound so clean, crisp and have so much detail – we’ve reviewed a lot of buds on this channel and to say that these are the best sounding true wireless earbuds we’ve heard wouldn’t be an exaggeration. Especially, what they’ve done with the bass is extremely satisfying. They hit hard but also decay really well.
I’ve recently been tripping on Kiran Ahluwalia’s Indian fusion album 7 billion and the bass on the tablas on the opening track ‘Khafa’ sounds just mwaah. Check it out if you’re in the market for some new music. Kiran’s voice sounds fantastic on these buds, without any weird artifacting and the overall mix sounds clear, crisp and just very detailed.
The treble is EXACTLY up my alley too – with plenty of detail and none of the sibilance. It’s been a long time since I’ve really dug something like this. Other genres which are bass heavy or guitar distortion-heavy performed just as favourably. Side note – does the latest Megadeth album have a new mix? It just sounds better than when it was first released.
Anyway – be warned though – this is definitely a more refined set of earbuds. And especially at lower volumes they can sound kinda boring, no equal-loudness compensation or smarts here it appears.
Again – in case you missed it, for us this is S-tier soundwise.
ANC & Transparency
The ANC mode on the Between 3ANC comes in at Tier A in the DHRME rating list. This puts it in the same class as the Sony LinkBuds S, Sony WF-1000XM4 and Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro. Low end is cancelled out well. Highs are suppressed quite well too although some voices will be heard. Which may not be a bad thing depending on where you are and what you’re doing. Colour us impressed though – we did not expect this from a product so geared towards sound quality.
Which puts it in the same class as the EarFun Air Pro 3, Nothing Ear 2 and Sony LinkBuds S. You can hear plenty of the low end and voices are clear. So you’ll have no issues with having a conversation either on a bus or walking in traffic while still being aware of your surroundings. As long as you’re not in a quiet environment, because that white noise drove us up the wall! That’s why we could barely use these at home in transparency mode and ended up switching to ANC instead. And if you’re in a windy situation you will hear the wind piped in through the buds. Switching to the ANC mode will help though. It won’t eliminate it entirely, but makes the buds more usable. Careful walking the streets in that mode though – you don’t want to end up between a car and the pavement. Between? Between? Get it? Hm.. let’s move on.
The implementation of ANC modes is very simple. And we dig that. No 20 point slider or 3ANC modes for ANC, Transparency and a Normal mode that you probably don’t need. Get it? 3ANC modes? 3ANC? Tough crowd.. anyway.. You get just ANC and Transparency. That’s it. You press on either of the physical buttons to toggle between them. You can do the same from the app too if you like. But like we said – we would’ve liked to be able to change the ANC mode on calls on the buds. That’s just the status of these buds at the moment. Get it? No? Ok.. fine. We’ll stop.
Calls
You know what they say. There ain’t no DHRME review without popping popsicles and testing testic…
Those of you considering these Between 3ANC – do you plan on using them for calls? Before we talk about the samples – we’ve used these buds for work from home calls, in the car and at the office. And the feedback has been just ok. The voice to others was ok albeit sometimes a bit processed. If you speak softly and trail off at the end of words and sentences – like Kevin tends to do, then we wouldn’t recommend these. What we did notice and what you see in the tests is that the 3ANC tends to cut out background noise quite aggressively and in the process cuts out the speaker’s voice when speaking softly. So if you speak loud and clearly – you should be ok. But otherwise, be careful with these buds. The Nothing Ear 2 and the AirPods Pro gen 2 didn’t suffer these issues.
Now, do these come with vakman controls? Like we said in the design section – we’re impressed with the controls onboard these buds. The volume controls do work on calls, which we’re very happy about. On the flip side there is no ability to mute your mic from the buds. And although you can toggle the ANC mode when listening to music, you cannot do that on a phone call. It’s on transparency mode by default. This makes sense if you’re outside and need to hear your environment. But with the amount of white noise these buds have – let’s just say being able to do calls with noise cancelling in the safety of your home or office is the better option. If you really want – there is a solution. You can change the ANC mode from the app. There’s also a bit of occlusion when on a phone call – that feeling of hearing your own voice through your skull. Not super pleasant.
Alternatives
Look, at this price – you’d think the market would be quiet. But yeah as a channel that reviews a TON of wireless earbuds – we KNOW that there are a LOT of options here too. Let’s just take a deep breath and name them. You ready? *inhales* Bang and Olufsen BeoPlay Ex, Final ZE 8000, Bose QuietComfort Buds 2, OnePlus Buds Pro 2, Master and Dynamic MW08, Campfire Orbit, Oppo Enco X 2, Technics AZ80… Ok you know what? Maybe we’ll make another video on these premium buds. If you’d like to see that – comment below ‘I come for premium’.
To Buy or Not Dubai
All right – so – should you buy the Between 3 ANC? Well, we’re kinda Between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand – these are SOLID buds! The sound is top of the line. They’re portable, fit well, are comfortable and have pretty much all the bells and whistles except an in-ear sensor and a really feature packed app. The noise cancelling is also great and so is the transparency.
But here’s the thing – these kinda suffer from poor call quality and that white noise on transparency – it borders on unbearable in a quiet environment. The app reliability is on the lower side and the multipoint situation is just ok – not terrible – but definitely not a premium experience.
So you know what – if money is not an object – we’d say that these buds deserve their Status as a cult favourite. So many of you spamming our comments so many times aren’t wrong. These are legitimately excellent buds and we’re thrilled that you guys bullied us into this. But if you want more than great sound, ANC, an awesome control scheme and comfort, we’d recommend looking at alternatives.
Speaking of bullying, we wanna thank all of you guys who support our work here as YouTube Members and Patrons. It’s near impossible to make a living from YouTube at our scale and also since we NEVER have agreed to be sponsored by companies whose products we review. If you appreciate our integrity, for the price of a coffee a month you could consider supporting us.
And you know what – since we have a lot of earbuds – we might actually give some away to our Patrons and Members. More details coming soon.
You’ve been upgrading your status. And we’ve been DHRME. Namaste!